This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Contact: AtlanticYardsReport[at]hotmail.com

I also propose reorganization of our economic development efforts. We have spent billions in tax benefits and grants through dozens of programs and a myriad of uncoordinated state agencies. Once again, we are just not getting our money’s worth. We must restructure our approach into coordinated regional strategies investing in cluster economies. That’s what works. I will create a State infrastructure bank to help fund and better coordinate public works investment in our State. I will orient our health care institutions and academic institutions to be high tech job generators in this exciting, new innovation economy. And we will make New York more competitive by reducing the high costs of doing business in New York. The essential job of government is to facilitate, not frustrate, job development.

Does that mean Cuomo will rein in agencies like the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), partner and enabler of developers like Forest City Ratner?

If Cuomo had given back Bruce Ratner's campaign contribution, that might hint toward a yes. But he didn't.

Cuomo, to be sure, has much broader goals in mind. As the Times reported:

In a direct confrontation with a Legislature controlled by his own party, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said he would pressure lawmakers this fall to state publicly whether they would embrace essential ethics changes, including disclosing their outside income, ceding control of redistricting to an independent panel and submitting to an outside ethics monitor.